Just fooling around the other day and wound up selecting my OPPO BDP 205 as the Zone on Roon and then routing the Oppo to the Direcstream DAC via coaxial output. I instantly heard an improvement in sound. Wider soundstage, clearer sound like a thin gauze had been removed between me and the music and a slightly brighter sound more preferable to my aging ears. I have revisited this setup going from Roon right to the Bridge II and A/B’d back and forth with the Oppo as the endpoint and I always prefer the Oppo pre DAC now. Has anyone tried this combo? Any explanation as to why this approach could be yielding improved sound?
I have done that very thing with Audirvana and it has proven to be an amazing move in terms of streaming quality. I don’t use Roon but I can’t imagine it would not work well. Those Oppo 205s are so solid in so many ways! I removed the Bridge II from my chain and now use the Audirvana+ (via purpose-built Mac Mini) > Oppo UDP-205 > DIrectStream DAC.
I’m now using my OPPO 203 as the Roon end point then into the DSJ. Im pretty sure I like it better this way.
I just tried this and I actually think it degraded the sound quality by a bit. Any theories on what’s going on? Is there a different PCM bitrate I could choose on the Oppo, or maybe shift it to DSD for the output? What are your settings on the Oppo and the PS Audio DSD Dac ?